Chapter Text
The sun was soon to rise when an old, old star fell back to the Lands Between. Its radiance, uncontested in the morning dim, flashed through the ashen branches of the Erdtree as it passed beyond Altus. As it sailed over the Divine Tower of Raya Lucaria, it vanished, as shooting stars typically do. Of the many souls who beheld its passage, only a few were able to see the figure it left behind, floating slowly down to the tower's peak.
Among those few, only one cared to know the figure's identity. And so, she set off, there one step and gone the next, each stride taking her more than a half a mile. As she neared her destination, her sealed eye ached, worse and worse. She ignored it.
The ghostly traveler took only a short while to reach the Carian Inverted Tower. Its few remaining defenders were helpless to stop her. Mages and finger creepers turned toward her, scrambling, and she stalked past them, leaving confusion and anger in her wake. With a final clap of her boot heel against stone, she placed her hands against the great door at the tower’s peak, and she shoved it open.
There, the fallen star’s rider sat, smoking a pipe and looking at a charred corpse. It was tall, with scraps of red hair still framing its annihilated face, and it was centuries old. Its identity, though, was no mystery to the ghostly traveler, for she had followed a brave companion to this place only half a year ago. The corpse was that of a demigod, Ranni the Empyrean Princess, child of Rennala of the Full Moon and Radagon of the Golden Order. Hers was one of the two deaths that caused the Shattering, the endless war whose embers still burned in the Lands Between.
The newcomer, sitting beside the body of Princess Ranni, knew that story better than anyone living. She was, after all, the Princess Ranni herself.
“You,” Melina said at last, “are back.”
Turning, her doubled face half-hidden by a large, white hat, Ranni the witch (as she now called herself) allowed a small smile to cross her lips.
“I am back, indeed. Thou hath a way with words, finger maiden.”
Melina gripped her knife, but she didn’t draw it. Ranni watched, puffing at the pipe, still smiling.
“I was never a proper finger maiden. Didn't you guess that, witch?”
Ranni shook her head. “I never figured you out. Mine consort, on the other hand,”--she took a moment to glance at the ring on her finger--“did. I gather that was the source of the trouble between you.”
“She explained the whole matter to you, did she?” Melina asked, incredulous. Where had this woman and her tarnished been? Where was her tarnished now? Who did this ancient brat think she was, waltzing back into the world after weeks and weeks of silence while the Erdtree slowly burned?
Ranni stood, still looking at her ancient corpse. “She hath explained that and more, in the time that we have been gone. I saw myself that her strength was amazing, even in the short time I traveled with thee as a doll. But the rest of what the two of you accomplished… it doth defy belief.”
“She is herself? She remembers our journey?" Melina stammered. "She… she tells you stories ?”
“Aye, she does. But some things, she doth not need to say.”
Ranni held an open hand to the mist, and a beautiful silver staff fell into it. The witch shook the staff accusingly toward Melina, and the kindling maiden found herself taking an involuntary step back. This was not a fight she desired, and if the witch was a god, not one that she was sure she could win.
“She doth not need to say that she cared deeply for thee, that thy company was vital during the months of furious struggle and battle. She doth not need to say that when she learned that thou wert planning to die for her sake, she felt helpless rage. And so, she took Vyke’s mad heresy for advice, and went below the capital. And thee allowed it!”
Melina gritted her teeth. “To burn was my decision! My purpose! It was my birthright! And I couldn’t make her see it. All I could do was beg. Threaten that if she went through with it, I would leave. That I would hunt her down and kill her. That she would never see me again either way.”
Ranni laughed. “My stepmother’s schemes are no birthright I would cling to. This advice, I give from the bitterest and most desperate personal experience: Some inheritances are better left unclaimed. Have not thee and I both nearly suffocated under that burden?”
The witch took her pipe out and swirled it through the air. Moonbeams collected in the bowl, and she lit it again, taking another puff.
“As for my love’s unswaying determination to burn herself alive, she did not do it just because she liked thy company, half-sister. She did it because she would never have accepted that thy life was a just price for her success.”
Half-sister, indeed. So the witch knew she was Marika's child. She likely knew all the secrets her tarnished did, and Melina's tarnished had been insatiable. The two of them had been to every corner of the lands between, searching for power, preparing to challenge the Golden Order for Ranni. Melina struggled to find the words to defend her claim, but it was no use. The witch was correct. She could call it her decision to make all she liked, but her tarnished had never seen it that way. To her, in the end, she had been just another life to be saved. Melina’s hand dropped from her dagger.
The Carian Princess swung her staff anyway, and an enormous spectral troll’s hand slammed into Melina. It grabbed her, lifting her into the air.
“Ah!”
“I was not finished elucidating the matter for thee, thou self-absorbed ingrate. She chose to pay thy price herself, half-sister. But dost thou know what it cost her?”
Melina gasped for breath. Ranni's face was losing its calm, and her eyes had gone narrow. White flashing from her irises seemed to overwhelm Melina’s vision.
“Every day, I wake on our bed of starlight, and I see her convulsed with nightmares. When I embrace her, make love to her, I can feel the heat from her scars. I try my best to surround her burning flesh with the moon's chill. And it still hurts her. The god is gone! All the gods are gone! She drove the flame away herself, and my new order chased them all off forever! The frenzy no longer burns! And still, her flesh smolders, like embers under ash, and gives her not a moment's peace!”
Ranni stopped shouting, and took a ragged breath. Melina, finally, found enough air to speak.
“I'm… sorry…”
It was the truth. Her tarnished had saved her and the world both, and for what? Melina could think of no purpose, no need she fulfilled. She should, at least, have spared the hero her pain. She should have finished her life's mission in the Forge of the Giants.
Ranni hesitated, and then the troll's hand loosened its grip. Melina landed heavily on the ground.
“On the matter of abandoning her, I have no quarrel with thee. I watched her descend to the Frenzied Flame Proscription in as much horror as thou did. I did not trust the needle either. Her lack of a plan was maddening… But of all her stunning feats of persistence and strength, none surprised me nor delighted me quite so much as her emergence from the vortex beyond time in Farum Azula, where I could not even see her from the stars. When she entered, the frenzied flame had nearly overtaken her. When she returned, it was gone, annihilated by Miquella’s needle.”
Tears filled Melina’s vision. “She truly found a way to use the needle? I begged her… I told her it was impossible.”
Ranni smiled again, and this time it was kind. “It wasn’t.”
Melina sat, arms around her knees, and found that she was weeping. She did so silently. That seemed important to her somehow, to stay silent, and she realized that she had not cried since the bewildering and painful days following her "birth." If she had been too loud then, the official who watched her room would shout at her.
Ranni gave her some time, but before long, she came over and laid her left hands on Melina’s arm. Melina allowed herself to be pulled up, and looked at the witch. Ranni had long since abandoned the doll, but she still resembled it. She had managed to keep all four arms, and while she was still blue, it was the color of her skin, not paint on enamel. Instead of chips and visible joints, she had the far-away smoothness of the face of the moon, decorated with tiny imperfections that resembled its surface. Melina had the urge to touch her, to see if she could feel minuscule ridges and craters, but it was easy to ignore the impulse given that her ribs still hurt from the conjured fist.
“So why did you return? Is there some way to heal her here?”
“None that I know of. There are those to whom I could not fulfill my obligations while the Golden Order still controlled these lands. I mean to do what I can for them.”
Melina remembered Blaidd’s madness, and shuddered. The Greater Will had never been a kindly steward, and the Empyreans’ shadows had been a cruel measure indeed. That aside, what of the Golden Order?
Melina looked hard at the witch. “You speak as though the Order were gone for good. How? Has your ‘Age of Stars’ really ended their influence, forever?”
Ranni's grin turned savage. “Forever. The substance of our world is lethal to them, now. Like adding a powder to a harmless tincture that transforms it, all at once, into searing acid. The first time the Greater Will, or the Formless Mother, or the Rot tries to stick their fingers in again, they’ll lose them. That is mine Order. Each and every mortal being may now find their own path. The power to make a new world, to fix each person’s destiny in the stars, belongs to my hands, and only mine. And I have thrown it away.”
The new god of the world looked like a little girl who has put away her toys herself, and been praised by her mother for it. Melina felt an old wound ache. She thought of the room hidden at the edge of the Forbidden Lands, a tiny, comfortable place. An armory, with her the only weapon, a secret dagger to be loosed upon the fingers when they betrayed their chosen god. Melina had been kept informed and taught to fight. She had never once been acknowledged.
Ranni cleared her throat, and Melina looked back at her. “Truthfully, mine consort did give me some few errands of her own.”
She held out a hand, and opened it. Melina gasped. In her palm, glinting in the twilight, was Torrent’s ring. Melina slowly reached for it, and at Ranni’s indication, took it, putting it on.
“He was unhappy up there with us. One would imagine a lifelong steed to be thrilled at the prospect of running endlessly through a field of stars, but Torrent is an ancestral spirit, tied in his soul to the Lands Between. That, or mayhaps he loved his second master most.”
Melina whistled through the ring, and there he was, shaggy and hot and soft and so, so pleased to see her. He leaned against her, huffing happily, and Melina hugged his neck. Ranni chuckled at their enthusiasm.
“Mine latter theory, I think, proves true. ‘Tis an excellent reunion.” Her expression skewed, and Melina barely heard her continue under her breath “I wonder if mine consort will welcome me back so… demonstratively.”
Melina resolved to pretend she hadn’t heard the last part. A god and a lord or not, they were, after all, newlyweds.
The kindling maiden whistled again, returning Torrent to the ring. She stroked it with her thumb, and whispered “Just wait until I return to the ground. I'll spend the rest of my life in a field, and never dismiss you again.” She opened the tower doors.
“Wait a moment.”
Melina looked back guiltily. “Oh. Of course, I must thank you both. This means so much to–Torrent was my only friend for so long, and–”
“Yes, you're welcome. But I had a proposal.”
Ranni almost laughed at the warring gratitude and reluctance on the erstwhile maiden's face. After a moment where she clearly considered leaping over the side of the Tower to escape, Melina asked, “Yes…?”
Sighing heavily, Ranni held up her arms. “Whilst I would love to simply fly to each of my destinations in a few steps through the moonlight, many of mine errands may start, or end, in a fight. Now, my powers have never been stronger, and this body is godly indeed. But it tires, and I cannot allow fatigue to impact my results, not with my wife waiting so eagerly to hear good news. Luckily, I have an idea! Some of my tasks will likely be of interest to thee. And so, I would like to offer thee a position as my escort, for the duration of my return.”
Melina considered it. The proposal was galling, and Ranni would likely continue to call Melina’s tarnished “my wife.” That idea annoyed her.
“Thou art welcome to refuse, of course. In that case, I shall borrow Torrent for a short while, and return him to you ere I depart again.”
Ah. Torrent, it seemed, would be pressed into the princess’s service either way. She sighed.
“No, my lady, I should be happy to escort you. Where are we going first?”
Far gone from the Lands Between, the peak of a wind-scoured mountain bore witness to the end of an incredibly long war. A dragon, the strongest one of all, panted on the stone, dying in a pool of its own blood. Its opponent raised a sword, ready to grant it mercy.
“No.” There came a small voice came from above them, and the warrior stopped.
“Even this one, my Lord?”
The horrible beast scoffed and spat, denying them. But even as it struggled, golden light lifted it up, and it felt a wonderful healing peace.
“Yes, dear consort. Always remember; in the new world of our making, all things will flourish, whether graceful, or malign.”